J.BradfordDillon

Nothing encourages idle hands to write than resting comfortably in a gliding rocking chair with a MacBook Pro in one hand and a glass of pleasingly diluted spirits in the other. Then again, how idle can hands be when encumbered so? So it goes.

As I’ve mentioned previously, in an article about fictional feline back-stories, I’ve been thinking a bit about life, relationships, and fatherhood lately, as I steadily approach the latter. My life is about to change, with the entry of another, and I find I’m becoming very introspective, wondering what kind of world my wife and I are bringing this baby into. One of the things I’ve been focusing on lately is communication. Specifically, the communication between myself and my wife.

If you were to follow my wife and I through one of our weekly trips to the grocery store, I am convinced you would assume the worst about the future of our marriage. Even in the time it would take us to peruse the foreign food aisle in search of tortillas and salsas, you might come to believe we were headed for certain doom. A typical conversation you might here would sound something like this. Continue reading

Allow me to digress into something that only a small number of my minuscule readership will find interesting. I’m about to become a father, which makes a man reflect on a lot of things. Not necessarily deep or wise things, just life in general. I’ve been thinking about my life as I know it, what I like, what I don’t like, and what makes me laugh. I’ve got a couple posts like this coming, so just bear with me, and try to be entertained.

My wife and I have owned just under a dozen cats in our two years of marriage. Before you write me off as one of those creepy cat people who spend hours trying to find the freshest food on the shelf at the petstore, understand that I’m counting the half-a-dozen kittens and mother that we fostered for 4 months. We kept one of the kittens, so that leaves roughly six cats that we’ve kept as our pets, and five that we only kept for a time.

At any rate, cats have really strange habits, and far more personality than any other pet. In order to make sense of their idiosyncrasies, my wife and I have come up with back-stories and explanations for each of them. They are almost as creative as their names. Here are just a few. Continue reading